Proud to say Georgia

Since 1851, 25 governors of Georgia have been graduates of Georgia. At least 17 UGA alumni are presidents or provosts of colleges and universities in the U.S. Nine UGA graduates have received the Pulitzer Prize. Four UGA alumni have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Undergraduate Admissions

The University of Georgia is a national leader among public universities in the numbers of major scholarships earned by our students. We have had eight Rhodes Scholars since 1995. In the same period, our students have won 46 Goldwater Scholarships. UGA students have earned 12 Truman Scholarships since 1995, and each year we have multiple recipients of major national scholarships.

Graduate Admissions

Continuing Education

Whether you are looking for personal improvement, seeking a credential or wanting to change your career path, the University of Georgia Center for Continuing
Education delivers a variety of educational programs to meet your learning needs.

International Students

The University of Georgia has approximately 180 International Cooperative Agreements (ICAs) in over 50 countries. These agreements allow for the formal
development of activities such as faculty and student exchanges, collaborative research, seminars and workshops, and/or service programs.

Research at UGA

The Office of the Vice President for Research encourages and supports UGA research, scholarship and creative activities by assisting with the recruitment of research-intensive faculty, and providing infrastructure for sponsored research. We help to move UGA innovations into the marketplace, encourage research-based economic development, and ensure responsible conduct in research.

Centers & Institutes

UGA research addresses real-life problems, including the grand challenges associated with water, food, fuel, environment and health. It also enriches the soul through the arts, humanities and social sciences. OVPR's Interdisciplinary centers, institutes and research initiatives provide enhanced interactions and focus on advanced areas of research.

Student and Postdoctoral Research

Undergraduate students, graduate students and postdoctoral scholars are critical to the successful pursuit of research and scholarship at the University of Georgia. They contribute in multiple ways to research and scholarship in the physical, life and social sciences, as well as the arts and humanities.

PSO Units

For more than 80 years, PSO has led the University in bringing its resources to each of Georgia’s 159 counties, 500+ cities, and around the world, serving more than 110,000 individuals annually to improve the quality of life in Georgia and beyond.

Service-Learning

The University of Georgia has been recognized by the Carnegie Foundation for its institutional commitment to community engagement through teaching, research, and public service with the Community Engagement Classification. UGA was one of only 115 colleges and universities to achieve this elective classification in 2010 and joined the ranks of only 311 institutions nationally.

Campus Life

Student Affairs is a primary point of contact for students through more than 600 registered student organizations; student programming groups; social
fraternities and sororities; student leadership programs and volunteer services; and international and multicultural programs.

Health & Recreation

The 440,000-square-foot Bernard B. and Eugenia A. Ramsey Student Center for Physical Activities is one of the largest and most comprehensive fitness/exercise facilities for students and faculty in the country.

Get Involved

In 2000, UGA was the first university in the nation to organize a collegiate Relay For Life. It raised more than $115,000. UGA Relay now has over 3,200 student volunteers and has raised more than $2.3 million, benefiting The American Cancer Society.

Academic Units

Students and faculty pursue arts studies in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. The Special Collections Libraries provide access to materials related to the history and culture of Georgia, while the Willson Center and ICE promote Interdisciplinary inquiry and creative activity in the arts.

About UGA

Seeing things in a different light

Materials that emit visible light after being exposed to sunlight are commonplace and can be found in everything from emergency signage to glow-in-the-dark stickers. But until now, scientists have had little success creating materials that emit light in the near-infrared range, a portion of the spectrum that only can be seen with the aid of night vision devices.

In a paper published in the early online edition of the journal Nature Materials, however, University of Georgia scientists describe a new material that emits a long-lasting, near-infrared glow after a single minute of exposure to sunlight. Lead author Zhengwei Pan, associate professor of physics and engineering in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and the Faculty of Engineering, said the material has the potential to revolutionize medical diagnostics, give the military and law enforcement agencies a "secret" source of illumination and provide the foundation for highly efficient solar cells.

"When you bring the material anywhere outside of a building, one minute of exposure to light can create a 360-hour release of near-infrared light," Pan said. "It can be activated by indoor fluorescent lighting as well, and it has many possible applications."

The material can be fabricated into nanoparticles that bind to cancer cells, for example, and doctors could visualize the location of small metastases that otherwise might go undetected. For military and law enforcement use, the material can be fashioned into ceramic discs that serve as a source of illumination that only those wearing night vision goggles can see. Similarly, the material can be turned into a powder and mixed into a paint whose luminescence is only visible to a select few.

The starting point for Pan's material is the trivalent chromium ion, a well-known emitter of near-infrared light. When exposed to light, its electrons at ground state quickly move to a higher energy state. As the electrons return to the ground state, energy is released as near-infrared light. The period of light emission is generally short, typically on the order of a few milliseconds. The innovation in Pan's material, which uses matrix of zinc and gallogermanate to host the trivalent chromium ions, is that its chemical structure creates a labyrinth of "traps" that capture excitation energy and store it for an extended period. As the stored energy is thermally released back to the chromium ions at room temperature, the compound persistently emits near-infrared light over period of up to two weeks.